We just received an announcement that online genealogy company Ancestry.com has purchased Find A Grave, the site with the largest database of free burial information and photos contributed by volunteers.

Find A Grave will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Ancestry.com, and will continue to be managed by its founder, Jim Tipton.

I already hear people asking if the site will remain free. Yes, says Ancestry.com president Tim Sullivan. From the press release:

"We will maintain Find A Grave as a free website, will retain its existing policies and mode of operation, and look forward to working with Jim Tipton and the entire Find A Grave team to accelerate the development of tools designed to make it even easier for the Find A Grave community to fulfill its original mission to capture every tombstone on Earth.”

I've found family tombstone photos on Find A Grave, and you probably have, too. The 18-year-old site has 100 million memorials to deceased people, and 75 million photos, a significant addition to Ancestry.com's content.

Ancestry.com plans for Find A Grave include a mobile app for uploading cemetery photos (Billion Graves, another cemetery website, has one), improved customer support, an easier editing of already-submitted memorials and foreign-language support.

This isn't the first time Ancestry.com has acquired a free, grassroots genealogy site: You may remember back in 2000, when the company (then called MyFamily.com) purchased RootsWeb. In 2008, RootsWeb was moved onto Ancestry.com servers.

We'll bring you more details as we learn them.

Update:Here's an FAQ on the acquisition from Tipton, who says he realized "Find A Grave had gotten too big to run it as I always
have and I also realized that I might not be around some day ...
and I wanted to make sure it had a stable home, while still retaining
control over how it evolves. But ...
I'm hoping this gives me the opportunity to do so many of the things
that I've always wanted to do with the site now that I have some real
resources behind me."

Origins.net and the Devon
Wills Project have compiled a free index of pre-1858
Devon wills, administrations and inventories. Most of the records
indexed here were destroyed during World War II in 1942, according
to the site, so "the overall aim of this index is to create a
finding-aid to enable the researcher to determine what probate
materials were originally recorded." You'll get source information
for any surviving documents that match your search. The
Devon Wills Project, 1312-1891 is searchable free at Origins.net.

The free FamilySearch.org records collection has grown by 192 million indexed records
and record images from Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Spain, Switzerland, the
United States and Wales. Notable US additions include Veterans
Administration Pension Payment Cards, 1907-1933. See the full list
of new and updated collections and click through to search or browse
them from the
FamilySearch News and Press Blog.

Subscription genealogy site findmypast.com
has launched an Irish
Newspaper Collection of nearly 2 million searchable Irish
newspaper articles dating as far back as the early-to-mid 1800s .
The papers come from the British
Library and include The Belfast Morning News, The
Belfast Newsletter, The Cork Examiner,The Dublin
Evening Mail, The Freeman’s Journal and The Sligo
Champion. The collection is available on findmypast.com and
with a World
subscription on findmypast.com international sites.

It's a question that burns inside my brain this time every year:
Why is Oktoberfest celebrated in September?

Here in "Zinzinnati,"
where German roots run deep, we've already had our Oktoberfest. Our
neighbors across the river in Kentucky have one this weekend. In
Munich, Germany, home of the first and largest Oktoberfest, the two-week
party wraps up the first weekend in October.

After the summer's grain was harvested, brewers needed to empty
those casks to make room for the October start of the brewing season. People were happy to
help.

In 1810, by the date the royal wedding made Oktoberfest
official, there wasn't much beer left. Horse racing was the main
event there, and Prince Ludwig repeated the races every year on his
anniversary. Over the years, the festival was extended and combined
with finishing off the March beers, evolving into today's
party attended by millions around the world.

Figuring out your US ancestors' county boundaries can be like doing
a puzzle with pieces that keep changing size and shape.

If one of your ancestral families settled early in what's now Morrow
county in central Ohio, for example, they conceivably could've
resided in—count 'em up—seven different counties without moving an inch:

Morrow County was formed March 1,
1848, from Crawford, Knox, Marion, Delaware and Richland counties. (A small area went back to Richland County the next year.)

Marion County, formed April 1, 1820, from
a "non-county" area that was attached to Delaware County (it remained attached to Delaware County for administrative purposes until 1924)

Delaware County, formed April 1, 1808,
from part of Franklin County

Franklin County, formed April 30, 1803,
from Ross and a non-county area; it overlapped Wayne county

Ross County, formed Aug. 20, 1798, from
Adams, Hamilton and Washington counties

Adams County, formed July 10, 1797, from
Hamilton and Washington counties

Hamilton County is one of
Ohio's original counties, formed Jan. 2, 1790, from the
Northwest Territory. It expanded in 1792 with more Northwest
Territory and Washington County land.

That's seven different counties that could hold your family's
genealogy records. And this isn't even the most convoluted example
of how counties would annex land, get carved up, change their
borders and switch county seats.

The Unpuzzling
County Boundary Changes webinar takes place Thursday, Oct.
17, at 7 p.m. ET (6 CT, 5 MT, and 4 PT). Everyone who registers will
receive a PDF of the presentation slides and access to view the
webinar again as often as you want.

It's easy to see the "Antiques Roadshow" styling: "Genealogy Roadshow" had the
lines of people waiting to get in, the onlookers watching the expert
consultations, a host, a break to take in a few minutes of
local history (of the Belmont Mansion, where the episode was filmed), and the guests' surprised expressions.

I loved how the audience members leaned in to hear what genealogists D.
Joshua Taylor and Kenyatta Berry had to say about the guests' family
claims.

I loved how twice, another person related to the story emerged from the
audience to meet the surprised guest.

And I loved how Taylor and Berry quickly dismissed several common family claims,
such as being related to Davy Crockett, George Washington (who had
no known descendants) or Jimmy Carter. They always offered a
bright side: The husband of the woman who wasn't related to Davy
Crockett had a Revolutionary War ancestor, for example, making their children eligible for membership in the Daughters of the American
Revolution.

The show was fast-paced, so there were times I wanted
more and slower visual aids to explain the connections
researchers had uncovered. We saw family trees in some cases,
but the show zoomed through them pretty quickly.

I wished to spend more time on some stories. An African-American woman learned
from a letter discovered at an archive that she really is related to white
Tennessee governor Austin Peay. But who wrote the letter, and why?

And I just wanted to hear more about the
African-American family who learned their enslaved
ancestor, Dinah Bell, was brought from South
Carolina to Tennessee. A dozen or so family members of all ages
were hanging on Taylor's every word, and you could see how much
the information meant to them.

That story; the one about the tender photo of Lafayette Cox, an
African-American man, holding the little boy of the family he worked
for; and the story of Sarah Jones, a young woman who had never met
her father, were my favorites.

The National Genealogical Society is conducting a survey for
those who've attended one of its conferences, purchased one of
its publications or signed up for one of its courses. Both
members and nonmembers are invited to respond. You can take the
survey here.

I've already told my husband he's kicked out of the family room for
Monday night football next week: That's when the new "Genealogy
Roadshow" premieres on PBS.

This four-episode series has hosts Kenyatta Berry and D. Joshua
Taylor revealing the truth behind participants' family stories in front of
a live audience, which should bring a fun energy to the show. (I
chuckled at this
take on the Genealogy Roadshow format.)

Monday's episode was filmed at the Belmont Mansion in
Nashville, Tenn. One guest is David Miles Vaughn, who's been doing
genealogy for five years and wants to know if his family is really
related to Davy Crockett—a tale he'd always heard growing up.

Genealogy Roadshow premieres Monday, Sept. 23, at 9/8 Central on
PBS. Future episodes are set in San Francisco, Detroit, and Austin,
Texas.

Notice there's no room for photos or genealogy in
this procedure. Most of that stuff backed up online, although for
a lot of it, I'd have to look up where to retrieve it. And it sure
would be nice, once people and pets are safe, to be able to
save our important family papers and photos.

But let's face it: "Do the dishes or we'll be forced to eat cereal
with our fingers" trumps "Prepare family papers for a terrible
disaster that with any luck won't ever happen" on my to-do list.

Seeing the recent devastating floods in Colorado and fires in
California has made me reconsider this non-plan for my family
history materials. Before the end of the year, I want to

organize my paper research, documents and photos in one place
(using
these hints from our interview with Eric Pourchot of the
American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic
Works)

One of the caveats of genetic genealogy testing has been that you
get only a general idea of where in the world your roots are, such
as "British Isles," "Scandinavian" or "West African." (Labels and
specificity vary with the testing company and the test you choose.)
And the ethnicity estimates you do get can have a significant margin of
error.

That could be changing. "The AncestryDNA science team is looking
toward a future where we could reveal, in the absence of a family
tree, the most probable locations where one’s ancestors lived,"
writes population geneticist Julie Granka on
AncestryDNA's Tech Roots blog.

About 6,000 AncestryDNA customers received
a preview
last week of a new ethnicity estimate that more-accurately
calculates the person's ethnicity based on 26 reference populations
around the world. (The new, finer-resolution estimate works
with a customer's existing results, so no new testing is needed.)

Previously, someone with African-American ancestry might learn they
have genetic origins somewhere within the green bubble on the left (this image is from the Tech Roots blog, and used with permission).
The new analysis can narrow those roots to one of the six colored
bubbles on the right.

Those new ethnicity regions of West Africa are Senegal, Mali, Ivory
Coast/Ghana, Benin/Togo, Nigeria, and Cameroon/Congo, each of which
has a distinct set of tribal affiliations.

West Africa was the main source of the slave trade to America. This
finding provides a new genealogy research path for African-Americans
who've been unable to find records of enslaved ancestors.

"The 3:30 records pull for today
(September 13) has been canceled due to significant staffing
issues stemming from a problem relating to payroll activities
at 22 Federal agencies nationwide.

While we are making every effort to contain these problems,
there is some possibility the afternoon pull scheduled for
Monday, September 16, may be affected. We will advise you of
the situation as we receive information."

More (and happier) National Archives news: If you happen to be
in the Washington, DC, area this month, maybe you can catch one
of the National Archives' free genealogy workshops. Sessions
include the Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act (Sept.
17), Gold Star Mothers (Sept. 18), Using National Archives
Online Resources (Sept. 19), Anti-Tax Petitions from the Civil
War to the New Deal (Sept. 21), and more. For more information,
go to NARA's
DC-area events page and scroll down.

Still more National Archives news: NARA is opening the David
M. Rubenstein Gallery "Records
of Rights" exhibition on Nov. 8, and invites you to help
select the first original landmark document to be featured in
the exhibit. You can vote online for one of five documents by
visiting the Records of
Rights Vote web page.

Ancestry.com has released Family Tree
Maker 2014 for Windows. Updates include a new family view,
improved TreeSync (which synchronizes your tree int eh software
with your online Ancestry Member Tree), organizational tools
that let you sort children by birth order and view people by
location, more options for charts and reports, the ability to
export a single branch of your tree, more editing options, and
improved merging.

You can download Family
Tree Maker 2014 or get it on CD. (PS: Family Tree
Magazine is not affiliated with Family Tree Maker software
or with Ancestry.com. We hear this question often, so I just
wanted to answer it for you in case you were about to ask.)

This week, FamilySearch added more than 352,000 indexed
records to the free collections at FamilySearch.org. Records
come from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the United
States, and include Czech Republic censuses, Hungary civil
registrations, Polish Catholic church records and the US Social
Security Death Index. View the full list
of updates and click through to search these collections here.

Don't be sad—your genealogy TV-watching isn't over for the year. We
still have four
episodes of the new series "Genealogy Roadshow" coming up on
PBS, starting Monday, Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. It'll explore
noncelebrities' family history claims and reveal the answers before
a live audience.

My guess (after finding a bunch of online articles about computer
hacking in France) is that the name is variant of Hacher,
from the French word for "chop"—perhaps an occupational surname for
a woodcutter.

We at Family Tree Magazine get a fair number of questions about
"Where does my last name come from?" and the answer isn't always
easy.

You can hear some surnames and know immediately they're German (take
my Depenbrocks) or Italian (such as Fiorelli) or whatever, but
others are more ambiguous. And it could be that your surname is a
variant of the original name, or an Americanized spelling your
immigrant ancestor adopted after arriving here. Our contributing
editor Nancy Hendrickson gives her Shore family name as an example:
She always thought it was English, but it's actually a variation
of a Swiss name, Schorr.

Tonight, TLC's "Who Do
You Think You Are?" ends its TV season with a bang—a Big Bang,
that is, in an episode featuring "Big Bang Theory" star Jim Parsons (see what I did there?). He plays Sheldon Cooper, a portrayal often credited for the
sitcom's success.

In this preview of tonight's WDYTYA?, Parsons sounds like any other getting-started family historian. He
says he wants to learn more about his genealogy to honor the memory
of his father, and that someone—he can't remember who—told him the
family has French roots and a Louisiana connection.

FamilySearch has added 260,000 genealogy records and images from
Guatemala, Italy, New Zealand and the United States to the free collections at
FamilySearch.org. You can see the list of updated collections
and click through to each one here. (If there's a 0 in the Indexed
Records column for the collection you need, that set isn't
searchable. Instead, you'll have to browse to find records for your
family.)

According to the announcement, "The two services will work together
with the archive community over the next five years to digitize,
index and publish these records from the FamilySearch vault. ...
Ancestry.com expects to invest more than $60 million over the next
five years in the project alongside thousands of hours of volunteer
efforts facilitated by FamilySearch."

(FamilySearch's Granite Mountain Records Vault is the storage facility for master copies of records the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has microfilmed over the years.)

It sounds like Ancestry.com will put up the necessary funds, and
FamilySearch will provide volunteers for digitizing and/or indexing. It makes sense to me: As Ancestry.com tries to expand its global reach, it can utilize the record-duplication work that's already been done. And FamilySearch can speed up its project to digitize its 2.4 million rolls of microfilm.

The announcement was short on details such what record collections
would be digitized first or how and where the records and indexes would be
accessible.

A
2008 agreement to exchange FamilySearch's high-quality images
for select US censuses and Ancestry.com's indexes for those censuses
resulted in free indexes on FamilySearch.org, which link to record
images on Ancestry.com. The images are viewable to Ancestry.com
subscribers and on FamilySearch Center computers.

The 16 video classes, six live chats and lively message board
discussions are aimed at helping you research more efficiently and
accurately, find "problem" ancestors, and discover your ethnic
roots.

For example, take D. Joshua Taylor's presentation "Same Name, Same
Place: How to Tell It’s Your Ancestor." He'll show you how to use
strategies and tips such as:

List all the spelling variations of an ancestor's name. You
could record the birth (or baptismal) name as the "official"
name, then use an alternate information or notes section of your
software or charts to record the other names.

If two same-named men live in a town and you're not sure
which records are your ancestor's, set up a table to compare the men's
identifying information—birth, death and marriage dates and
places; family members' names; occupations; addresses; etc.

Create a timeline of all the records you've found for an
ancestor. You might note, for example, that he hadn't yet
arrived in the United States to be listed in the 1850 census, so
those records probably aren't for the same guy.

Land and tax records can help you sort out two people of the
same name, because both won't own the same property or be taxed
on the same things.

Female ancestor red flag: Some names were so common (hello,
Mary and Anna!) that a man might've had two spouses with the
same first name, leaving future family historians to assume they
were one woman. If you notice a large gap in children's ages, a
wife giving birth at an unlikely age, or her age and other
details suddenly changing in records, look for evidence of a
previous or subsequent marriage for her husband.

On "Who
Do You Think You Are?" last night, country singer and cookbook
author Trisha Yearwood learned her orphaned, impoverished
fifth-great-grandfather was convicted of stealing
and killing deer from an estate in 1760s England.

But instead of being hanged—then the lawful punishment for this
crime—he was transported to Britain's American Colonies. There, he received land that once belonged to the Creek Indians, and his
fortunes eventually reversed.

For researching British ancestors in general—whether or not they
were convicts—check out our Ultimate
British Genealogy Collection of how-to guides and video
courses on uncovering your family's records. It's 60% off right now
in ShopFamilyTree.com, but only 100 are available!